Amazing Oliver Wood CI by Musicbox at tda
It was a week after the now infamous Ministry of Magic Ball and, having gained a pair of clients in its wake, Alicia had been positively run off her feet. All she’d wanted to do after work on Friday was to crawl into a crack in the earth and hibernate until Monday morning at the very least. Unfortunately, Angelina had had other plans. It was Friday evening when Alicia found herself, much to her distaste, sprawled in an exhausted heap on Angelina’s living room floor. At this point, she had resorted to pretending to pore over pictures of ribbons Angelina had thrust at her.
‘D’you honestly
need to be thinking about the ribbons you’re going to tie round your chairs at this stage?’ Alicia said as she bent her elbow back and forth in an attempt to shake the stiffness from it.
‘’licia, I don’t think you quite understand the gravity of this situation,’ Angelina said, slowly lifting her head from where it had previously been poring over shades of seafoam and shamrock and midsummer’s grass. It was a menacing stare that Alicia found herself being fixed with. ‘My wedding is in one year, two months and four days and if I’m unprepared
everything will be a bloody shambles, and then my life will be ruined, and George will have to commit me to St. Mungo’s on our wedding night. And do you know whose fault that would be?’
‘Mine,’ Alicia stated dryly.
‘Precisely! Yours and everyone else’s who told me to plan later and that I had plenty of time – so, unless you’d like to be responsible for my divorce, choose a sodding colour.’
‘Alright then – purple,’ Alicia said as she scanned the swathes of material covering every inch of floor space. ‘And I’ve got to say that you could probably benefit from a session sometime soon…’
Angelina snorted in a most becoming manner. ‘If you think I’m paying you money to tell me I’m a nutter then you can take a running jump.’
‘It’d be free,’ Alicia said, as she gave her neck a thorough stretching, and leaned back against the base of the armchair Angelina had thrown her off of earlier for not working hard enough. ‘Anything to sort you out.’
‘Right, well book me in then! You’re always far more attentive when it’s your job to listen to me.’
Alicia narrowed her eyes. ‘Did you just agree to come to my workplace for me to examine your mental and emotional capabilities?’
‘I did,’ Angelina said as she held a strip of material in either hand and compared the merits of plum and mauve.
‘Well you can stop with the innocent act for a start,’ Alicia muttered as she slumped further into a state of exhaustion, and further onto the floor as the effort of supporting herself became too much.
‘What are you talking about?!’
Angelina’s doe-eyed look was almost too much for Alicia to bear. ‘I’m not going to have you near anyone remotely famous, you know?’
‘Not even your lover of the moment?’
‘If you’re referring to Viktor then that’s going to have to be a resounding no – he’s not even my client anymore.’
‘So I’ve heard. Getting to know him a little bit better than that, are you?’ Angelina said as she transfigured a hideous length of lavender into a lampshade, waggling her eyebrows as she went.
‘You’d be lucky to get over the door of my office never mind bloody meeting anyone.’
‘Shut up, you. I’m not the one luring an unbearably beautiful Bulgarian with a slightly wonky - but not intolerable - nose round to my flat at every opportunity.’
‘I am not!’ Alicia cried, a dashing shade of puce breaking out across her face. ‘…But how the hell do you know that he’s been in my flat?’
‘I have ways and means, love,’ Angelina took a sip out of her mug of tea, ‘ways and means.’
‘That prat’s been spouting rubbish again, hasn’t he?’
‘Oliver? Yes, of course he has. He’s a very insecure individual.’
‘The man needs a girlfriend,’ Alicia said as she gave up all hopes of keeping her eyes open and let the heaviness in her lids take over.
‘Or for Katie to acknowledge that she’s as desperately in love with him as he is with her, which I’m not sure she is to be honest. It’s a bloody shame.’
The pair lapsed into silence, Alicia splayed out on the hardwood floor and Angelina leaning back on the sofa flicking through
Bewitching Brides. Angelina’s little country cottage invited peace with everything, from the wooden beams on the ceiling to the patchwork rug draped over her ‘comfy chair’, oozing perfection, but this did not mean that perfection wasn’t easily shattered. The raucous thundering on the door at that moment proved that.
‘Who’s calling round here at three in the morning?’ Alicia mumbled, jolting out of the sleep that could have been.
‘It’s half nine,’ Angelina said, glancing at her watch. ‘But I’ve got no idea what nutjob’d be calling round here at this time. They must have a death wish.’
The occasional bashing of the door knocker was accompanied by a burst of laughter as Angelina marched to her front door. Alicia, however, decided to stay on the floor, reasoning with herself that if Angelina was kidnapped by masked men she would be much more help as a mediator than another hostage. Fortunately, these criminals seemed to be amateurs and the tongue lashing that Angelina appeared to be giving them had well and truly shut them up.
‘Look what the cat dragged in.’ Angelina looked thoroughly unamused as she rounded the corner into the living room with a chuckling George and an ashen-faced Oliver on her tail. ‘Sodding idiots.’
Angelina plonked herself back on the sofa and George soon followed, eliciting another feral cry of rage from Angelina as he lay down on top of her newly conjured lampshade. Oliver merely bobbed around awkwardly by the only spare seat left in the room, neglecting to sit in it for reasons unknown.
‘Well, isn’t this lovely?’ Alicia yawned.
‘It’s positively spiffing, old chum!’ George said, cackling at his own overused Percy impression.
‘I’ll give you spiffing,’ Angelina barked, causing Oliver to recoil even further.
‘I – I’m terribly sorry about this, Ange…’ Oliver shuffled. ‘He just couldn’t be stopped and I didn’t think he’d be able to manage getting here himself.’
‘Yes, effing fabulous you were with him, isn’t it? If you weren’t he might smell like something other than a brewery… And to think I said a good word about you earlier.’
‘Well, I, erm-’
‘Angelina, you beauty, you! The truth of this… matter – is that- is that I bumped into Olly at the Leaky Cauldron and he – he- he thought I was drunk!’ George was no longer able to contain his laughter. ‘Stuuuuuupid, Wood.’
Alicia fixed the panicky, terrified Oliver with a serious stare. ‘Merlin, Oliver, how could you even insinuate to that? You’re a sick man – a very sick man.’
‘Speaking of which, how’s Katie?’ Angelina chimed in.
‘Katie? Errr… I’m not sure,’ Oliver said as he suddenly became enraptured by the floor and made a fuss out of studying it.
‘Oh, Merlin, you can be a bore. We all know you love her.’
‘I-I-’
‘Right. Get out. The pair of you,’ Angelina said, gesturing wildly at the half-dead Alicia and the spluttering Oliver.
‘What?’ Alicia turned open-mouthed to Angelina.
‘You want to go home, Oliver’s about as comfortable as a man being clubbed to death by trolls and I’ve got a fiancé to hurl abuse at – I think it’s best we call it a night,’ Angelina said with half a grin.
‘Thank you,’ Alicia said with genuine feeling, not thinking twice about protesting or, Merlin forbid,
staying. She clambered up from her uncomfortable new bed on Angelina’s floor and began packing her things up, as George spread himself out over the entirety of the sofa and Oliver continued his ridiculous bobbing.
‘Alright, lad, are you coming then?’ Alicia asked Oliver as she threw her robes on.
‘Yes, yes, definitely!’
‘You’re bloody eager, aren’t you?’ Angelina said in response to Oliver nearly bolting out the door.
‘Merlin, no!’ Oliver looked as if Angelina was about to shoot him for insubordination. ‘Just tired – you know how it is.’
‘Right… Well, just get ‘licia home and then you can skip off to wherever it is you’re going you skittery git.’
‘I don’t need a guard of honour,’ Alicia protested, offended at the mere idea of having a man escort her home because she was somehow incapable.
‘Oh sod off – it won’t make you any less of a feminist if that’s what you’re worried about,’ Angelina said as she shuffled Alicia and Oliver out of the living room and unceremoniously tried to shove them out the front door.
However, it was clear Alicia had other ideas as she finally stopped blustering and jammed herself in the door. ‘Since when have I been a feminist?!’
‘Put it this way, Alicia’ Angelina said before edging Alicia further over the threshold, ‘we’re lucky you’re still shaving your legs.’
And then the door was slammed shut.
Oliver still had a nervous energy about him which only continued to grow as Alicia grumbled profanities under her breath. His usually impeccable coordination even seemed to be suffering as he took a tumble before they even reached the garden gate.
‘Alright, fess up, are you absolutely smashed or something? Because if you’re not I’m going to be worried.’
‘No, I’m fine.’ Alicia’s I’m-a-psychologist-and-I-can-kill-you-with-my-mind-glare seemed to have reached its peak when Oliver glanced at her from the corner of his eye. ‘Honestly! Angelina may terrify the life out of me, but there’s nothing else wrong.’
‘Are you really that much of a wimp? Wait, what am I talking about? Of course you are.’
‘…Is she really a Legilimens?’
A light bulb practically sparked alight above Alicia’s head. ‘Oh, so
that’s why you weren’t looking at her. Got something to hide?’ she asked with a wink.
Oliver mumbled a sarky comment under his breath, only managing to keep himself in Alicia’s good graces by opening the gate for her and narrowly avoiding falling into Angelina’s shrubbery in the process.
‘If I was a feminist I would have been enraged by that, you know,’ Alicia said as Oliver followed her and the gate clanged shut after them.
‘Yes, I know. It’s very good of you not to hit a man for opening a door or something for you. It’s the action of a sexist pig.’
‘Oh shut up.’ Alicia said as she turned round in the middle of Alicia’s lane, awkwardly scouting the surrounding area. ‘D’you think it’s dark enough to just Apparate from here?’
‘Probably not. If we were going to we’d have to synchronise it so that we’d leave at the exact same time or else one of us’d attract attention. Actually, I could just take you home with Side-Along?’
‘I don’t need you to babysit me - I just need to go to bed. You can head off home.’
‘Well, unless you’re bloody daft you may have noticed that even though you don’t need babysitting I might not be fit to be on my own,’ Oliver muttered unexpectedly.
Alicia walked towards Oliver. ‘Yes… Yes, the psychologist in me did notice that,’ she said as she hooked her arm through his. ‘Take us home, captain of mine.’
Oliver straightened himself up. ‘You don’t need to try and make me feel like more of a man, you know…’
‘I do know, but I thought you’d appreciate it,’ Alicia said with a smile.
‘You’re not half wrong there,’ Oliver said. It was only another second before he twisted on the spot and propelled them off into the unknown. Well, actually, to Alicia’s flat.
The landing was bumpy. It wasn’t desperately hard to tell that Oliver and Alicia were two people completely unused to Side-Along Apparition, and the fact that they’d toppled into Alicia’s bin before hitting solid ground only confirmed it.
Alicia rolled over and groaned. ‘Never again will I try and help you feel less pathetic, Wood. I’m going to let you wallow in self pity forevermore.’
‘Urghhh.’
‘Mmm, that definitely sounds a lot less like self pity,’ Alicia said, only attempting to hoist herself into a sitting position because a stone was sticking into her back.
‘That came from the bin…’ Oliver said.
Alicia looked up to see Oliver towering above her. ‘What?’
‘That groaning! It wasn’t me! What the hell have you put in here?’ Oliver paused over the bin lid, preparing to flip it back.
‘I-I’m not quite sure,’ Alicia said.
Just as Oliver reached out to open the bin, which may or may not have had a dying animal in it, the lid burst open, causing him to jump two feet into the air.
‘So I am not finding vot I am looking for in there,’ Viktor said as casually as one can when vaulting out from among someone else’s rubbish.
‘Oh my God!’ Alicia screamed. She scrambled away as far as the alley would allow, scraping her palms in the process. Viktor Krum putting his legs up on your desk was one thing, but Viktor Krum jumping out of your rubbish was another entirely.
It was at that moment, as Oliver staggered against the wall in shock, Viktor brushed some dirt off his robes and Alicia tried to take it all in, that two figures rounded the corner. From where Alicia sat[,] they looked rather menacing, and she could only hope that they weren’t the Muggle police; her mother would go mad if she got a criminal record.
‘What the hell’s going on here?!’ an unrecognisable voice cried - all but confirming Alicia’s worst fear.
‘I… I’ve not got a clue,’ Alicia managed to utter, but not loud enough for anyone to hear.
The dark had well and truly settled in, changing the sky to a threatening shade of navy and as the two figures (who now gave the appearance of being females) loomed closer Alicia sprang to her feet. She’d never been caught up in a fracas in an alley before, but apparently this was one life experience that she was destined to have. Not that she could say that she had ever wanted it. Viktor also looked ready to hop back into her bin, and Oliver wasn’t going to be much help either in his current bewildered state.
‘Officer, I can expla-’
Alicia was cut off mid-sentence. ‘You wouldn’t happen to be Healer Spinnet?’ the slightly taller of the two females asked as she drew closer. It was only now that Alicia was close enough to see that the two women were in full quidditch kit.
‘Alison? Is that you?’ Oliver asked the taller of the two, closing the gap between himself and the pair. ‘Merlin, it is! You almost gave me a heart attack. Well, a second heart attack,’ Oliver said, sparing a glance at Viktor.
‘Wood! I didn’t expect to see you here,’ Ginny Weasley said.
There was a few seconds of silence as Oliver embraced the two women in Holyhead Harpies robes, but it was soon split into a thousand pieces when Viktor decided to make his presence known.
‘I am here also!’ he said, drawing closer to the huddle and leaving Alicia clueless on the periphery.
‘I hadn’t expected such a welcoming party,’ Alison said with half a smile.
‘Well, to be honest, I hadn’t been expecting anyone at all,’ Alicia said as she gathered her voice and her senses. ‘Is there something you need to talk to me about, Ginny? I mean, would you like to come in?’
‘Please,’ Ginny said with enthusiasm, ‘I’m getting bloody goose bumps out here.’
‘Alright, follow me.’
Alicia rummaged in her pockets, retrieving her front door key, and walking briskly to the other end of the alleyway and up the stairs to her flat. She fidgeted with the stiff lock for a couple of seconds before moving aside to let the women in. However, Oliver and Viktor were just stood there in the alley like a couple of lost puppies – lost puppies with a mutual hatred of each other.
‘Right, you two can come in too,’ she said with a sigh. ‘You’ve got an absolute mountain of explaining to do Krum.’
‘I am thinking that I vill just go home and maybe I vill try and sleep.’
‘Get in the effing house.’
‘Yes, yes, ov course.’
Viktor rushed up the steps with an exasperated Oliver on his tail, glaring after him the whole way into the house. Alicia watched the progress of this interaction with mild amusement, closing the front door behind her, and trekking into her own living room where a motley crew was assembled.
‘Shall I put the kettle on?’ she asked. Tea was a remedy for everything.
There was a mumbled assent from the people gathered and Alicia hurried off to the kitchen, taking the opportunity to spy on the others through the glass door. Viktor had immediately assumed a prime spot on the sofa, leaving the girls flanking him and Oliver sitting on the old wooden rocking chair. It all looked horrifically awkward, especially since Viktor was trying to involve himself in a conversation between friends. Not that it surprised Alicia in any way, but she feared it might perplex the others just slightly.
The kettle clicked to a finish, at which point Alicia realised she had no idea how anyone liked their tea. She was going to have to be posh. She reached up and grabbed a tray from the cupboard above the bread bin, scrutinising it for a moment before deciding that rubbing the dust off it with her sleeve would more than do. Alicia clattered around the kitchen for another few minutes, sloshing milk into a jug, filling cups with hot water and hastily placing the sugar bowl on the tray before shuffling back into the absurdity that was in her living room.
Tea was distributed and the women’s teeth soon stopped clacking together quite so much.
‘So…,’ Alicia said as she nursed her own cup, ‘what exactly is this about?’
‘It’s – it’s about Gwenog,’ Alison said in a half whisper, leaning towards Alicia.
‘Gwenog Jones?’ Alicia’s face became just a little sharper. ‘I’m sorry, but I’m sure you know that I can’t give you any information that would breech my confidentiality agreement.’
‘Oh, God no!’ Ginny said. ‘We wouldn’t expect you to, but we’ve got some… issues involving her.’
Alicia was listening intently.
Oliver was undeniably interested.
Viktor was so nonplussed that he was in danger of throwing scalding tea all over his lap. Nobody bothered to inform him. Inevitably, he spilt it. Alicia exhaled forcefully, jumping up just as things were coming to a head to get a cloth to wipe down her sofa.
‘Maybe this would be something better suited to the office?’ she called from the kitchen. ‘We’ve got a
lot of people here that you might not want to discuss this in front of.’
Viktor bristled at the mere thought of being unwanted. Although, due to having to find a new seat after the tea spillage, he found himself sitting much closer to Oliver and it was extremely clear that he was unwanted there.
‘Honestly? I really don’t think this can wait – none of the team does,’ Ginny said.
‘Alright, go on,’ Alicia said awkwardly as she returned and began to scrub her sofa on bended knee.
‘Right, well, I don’t know how else to put this, so I suppose I’ll just come out and say it.’ Ginny hesitated uncharacteristically. ‘We think she’s trying to bump us all off.’
‘Bump you off?’ Alicia asked, releasing her dishcloth and leaning backwards to sit on the floor.
‘As in
kill us,’ Alison confirmed.
Oliver whistled lowly.
‘Okay… Well, don’t worry. If you can come to the office on Monday I’ll have just the ticket for that for you. And it’s
both of you that think this?’
‘It’s the whole team,’ Ginny said.
‘Right… I think I’ll just deal with you two for now. We can have a chat as soon as possible, and I’ll write you a couple of prescriptions for the apothecary if I think it’s necessary.’
‘Prescriptions?’ Ginny asked puzzled.
‘I’m sorry,’ Alicia said, running her hands through her hair, ‘I just think it might be necessary. Go home tonight and get some rest. I know it’s hard to believe right now, but Gwenog’s not
actually trying to kill you.’
‘Healer Spinnet, with all due respect, I’m positive that she is,’ Alison said. ‘She’s having us all followed by enchanted bludgers which seem to be dead set on decapitating us.’
‘Well, don’t worry. We’ll have this all sorted on Monday. I’m sure there’s a perfectly rational explanation.’
Ginny locked eyes with Alicia. ‘She enchanted them in front of us in the changing rooms and set them on us.’
‘Oh right. Right… Okay then, I think we may have a
minor problem on our hands.’
Author's Note: Sorry about the wait! I've been going crazy with exams, but I've managed to get this out for you ♥. However, I think the real question is is Gwenog actually a murderer or just insane? Or maybe there are some people out there in the world of ff that feel Ginny just deserves it :P. I think I may also detect that Oliver's a little lovelorn?
I'd love to hear all your thoughts! It's been great so far ♥
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